QuickTip: Additional PowerShell Registry drives

Windows PowerShell provides access to the system registry via two PowerShell drives: HKLM and HKCU, which maps to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry hives respectively.

PS > Get-PSDrive -PSProvider Registry

Name Used (GB) Free (GB) Provider Root               CurrentLocation
---- --------- --------- -------- ----               ---------------
HKCU                     Registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER
HKLM                     Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

To add registry drives for other hives like HKEY_USERS,HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT etc, we can use the New-PSDrive cmdlet with the provider path of each hive (the $null assignment is used to suppress the output of each New-PSDrive command).

$null = New-PSDrive -Name HKU   -PSProvider Registry -Root Registry::HKEY_USERS
$null = New-PSDrive -Name HKCR -PSProvider Registry -Root Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
$null = New-PSDrive -Name HKCC -PSProvider Registry -Root Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

PS > Get-PSDrive -PSProvider Registry

Name Used (GB) Free (GB) Provider Root                CurrentLocation
---- --------- --------- -------- ----                ---------------
HKCC                     Registry HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
HKCR                     Registry HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
HKCU                     Registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER
HKLM                     Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
HKU                      Registry HKEY_USERS

You won't be able to access the new registry drives after you exit a current PowerShell session. To make them persistent add the commands to your PowerShell profile.